Keep An Unperishable Faith, Although Tested By Fire

Who among you fears the Lord
and obeys the word of his servant?
Let the one who walks in the dark,
who has no light,
trust in the name of the Lord
and rely on their God.
But now, all you who light fires
and provide yourselves with flaming torches,
go, walk in the light of your fires
and of the torches you have set ablaze.
This is what you shall receive from my hand:
You will lie down in torment.

- Isaiah 50:10-11

This is an amazing passage where God reprimands those who instead of depending on Him and trusting Him, look for alternative outlets. This word from God is for those among us that are walking in complete darkness in their lives right now. It does not refer to the person that is living in sin but to the one that is faithful to God and in a moment of their life they come across a stage where they can't see anything. Everything is surrounded by darkness and with no possible solution in sight. This is a desperate situation where we have real, urgent necessities and we are waiting on God to supplement them, but instead all we see is darkness. We are walking everyday without understanding what is happening, we have no light from God to be able to interpret this difficult stage in our lives. We have prayed and trusted God, we have been faithful in keeping His word, God has spoken to us with specific words of blessings about our circumstances, but in reality... Nothing happens! Are you going through a similar situation right now where all you receive from God is a silence that never seem to end when you desperately need His glorious intervention? What should we do when only an action from God can save us, but in return all you receive from Him is Silence?

This is a very difficult test of faith to go through, therefore many of us, like the passage says, will start to look for their own solution elsewhere. We say, " God, you do something or I'll have to do something! - We all know how the story will end: failure, disillusion, wrong desicions that later on cause us even more heartache and regrets. This type of desperation ( you know, not waiting any longer and doing something about it) will never take us to something productive that will glorify God or a happy ending. Sincerely, waiting in times of prolonged silence from God, is easy to say but very difficult to go through. Especially when we face desperate situations in our finances, our health, our family, relationships, etc. To be able to get through this process, we need God's Grace and to stand firm on reading His word constantly because this is what will provide us with the necessary faith to keep moving forward.

Consequently, faith comes from hearing the message,

and the message is heard through the word of Christ.

-Romans 10:17

Why does God allow, in certain stages of our christian life, that we experiment these long periods of silence ? Take a look at this case in which God' people decided to do something about it when they saw themselves experiencing God's silence for a long period of time.

• The people of Israel in the desert (Exodus 32)

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, they gathered around Aaron and said, “Come, make us gods who will go before us. As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him.”

Aaron answered them, “Take off the gold earrings that your wives, your sons and your daughters are wearing, and bring them to me.” So all the people took off their earrings and brought them to Aaron. He took what they handed him and made it into an idol cast in the shape of a calf, fashioning it with a tool. Then they said, “These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.”

When Aaron saw this, he built an altar in front of the calf and announced, “Tomorrow there will be a festival to theLord.” So the next day the people rose early and sacrificed burnt offerings and presented fellowship offerings. Afterward they sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Go down, because your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have been quick to turn away from what I commanded them and have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They have bowed down to it and sacrificed to it and have said, ‘These are your gods, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt.’

“I have seen these people,” the Lord said to Moses, “and they are a stiff-necked people. Now leave me alone so that my anger may burn against them and that I may destroythem. Then I will make you into a great nation.”

But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God. “Lord,” he said, “why should your anger burn against your people, whom you brought out of Egypt with great power and a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he brought them out, to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth’? Turn from your fierce anger; relent and do not bring disaster on your people. Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac and Israel, to whom you swore by your own self: ‘I will make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and I will give your descendants all this land I promised them, and it will be their inheritance forever.’” Then the Lord relentedand did not bring on his people the disaster he had threatened.

In this passage we can see that Moses was in the presence of God for many days and down where the people of Israel were waiting for him, there was nothing but a prolonged silence. The days went by and the people would look over the mountains expecting Moses, this man of God, would come back, but nothing happened. I recommend you also read in The Bible three other passages that teach us about what God's people did when they experimented His silence and what God wants to teach us:

• 1Samuel 13:13
• Matthew 15:21-28
• John 11

In the middle of you facing this long stage of God's silence, have you realized what is really in your heart, that maybe you did not know about your self before, but needs to be changed? Usually God allows this to see what really is in our hearts and so that we ourselves may find out too, so that we can fix it by asking for His grace to help us. These long periods of God's silence are not to torture us, but God test His childrens' faith in Him So that:

• We learn that usually before He takes action in our circumstances, there is a prolonged period of silence
• We realize the things in our hearts that must change
• We can see how we are only interested in obtaining the blessing urgently, but we are not that interested in learning the spiritual esson behind the situation
• We can see whether we have a genuine, unperishable, and stable faith in Him
• We can learn whether we really believe He has control of everything that goes on in our lives, despite the difficult times